IP 89-10 Breaking with experience: The role of a preservice methods course.
Abstract
A math methods course is a critical site for intervening on prospective teachers' past experiences with mathematics, experiences that have often left them without meaningful understandings of mathematical content, appreciation of what mathematics entails, or confidence in their own ability to do and to learn mathematics. This paper examines the role of a preservice mathematics methods course in helping beginning elementary teacher candidates reexamine and move beyond these past experiences in order to help them learn to teach mathematics for understanding. The paper combines a conceptual analysis of the role of past experiences in learning to teach mathematics with description of new experiences that were specifically designed to intervene on those experiences. The conceptual analysis is elaborated with discussion of the prospective teachers' reactions.